Inside the warm, rosemary-scented taproom of the River Lantern Inn, Elin Hale stood behind the polished oak bar counter with a clean linen towel folded over her forearm, watching the tall, stooped man at the corner table count the last seconds of the town’s life on a silver dial.
Across the broad common room, forty-four of Harth’s fifty Charter shareholders sat shoulder to shoulder along the heavy trestle benches—coopers, tanners, fishwives, and grain-weighers who had come in from the rain at half-past five on Jon’s quiet word that the town’s deed would be witnessed before supper. On the raised notary desk beside the hearth-post, wrapped in protective oiled goatskin and tied with red linen tape, lay the thick vellum roll of the Bound Common Charter, heavy with its fifty red wax citizen seals.
None of the townsfolk spoke above a low, expectant murmur. Every eye in the room drifted between the rain-lashed front casements facing High Street and the corner table by the pantry door, where Warden Tomas Brecht sat alone behind an untouched pewter mug of small beer and a stoneware bowl of mutton broth that had grown cold an hour ago.
As the first deep bronze stroke of the sixth evening bell vibrated through the wet window-panes from the tower of St. Jude’s Shrine, Brecht lifted his silver Chancellery pocket-watch toward the hanging brass oil lamp.
